Tailoring communication to audience's knowledge level and interests is crucial for understanding.
Chunking information into main points aids comprehension by organizing content into manageable sections.
Deep dives
Importance of Tailoring Communication to Audience
Tailoring communication to the audience's level of knowledge and what they care about is crucial for ensuring understanding. For example, Apple's message about the iPod emphasized 'a thousand songs in your pocket' to resonate with customers, rather than technical specifications like gigabytes. This highlights the significance of aligning communication with audience interests.
Chunking Information for Digestibility
Chunking information into three main points or categories can aid in better comprehension. Using frameworks, like focusing on alignment, processes, and resilience, makes complex information more easily digestible. This technique simplifies communication by organizing content into manageable sections.
Making Data Relatable Through Analogies
Making data relatable through analogies can enhance understanding and engagement. For instance, comparing movie popcorn's saturated fat content to a bacon and eggs breakfast, a hamburger and fries lunch, and a steak dinner made the information more impactful and understandable. Analogies help translate complex data into familiar terms for the audience.
As communicators, we often need to take complex information (e.g., financial, technical, or scientific) and make it more understandable for our audience – we’re experts and they likely aren’t. But having so much knowledge on the topics we discuss can often make the job more difficult: we dive in too quickly, forget about our audience's needs, or use jargon that goes over their heads.
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, strategic communications lecturers Matt Abrahams and Lauren Weinstein explore the “curse of knowledge” and offer specific techniques you can use to be more successful in getting your point across.